Many PIN pads used by consumers to pay for purchases and communicate with point-of-sale systems make it very easy for attackers to steal payment card data, researchers say. The problem has to do with a failure by many payment card readers to properly authenticate the systems with which they communicate and to encrypt data before sending it to systems. The attack works because PIN pad devices from most manufactures do not authenticate POS systems when sending cardholder data, they say. PIN pads and card readers from manufacturers are susceptible to the kind of attacks they demonstrated at Black Hat.”]